The Fine Art of the PB&J
by Laura of Maychoria
Summary: Dean was just trying to help, but Jack O'Neill has his own way of doing things. The way of the Peanut Butter Zen. SPN/SG-1 crosover. A JacknDean story.
1. Chapter 1

**Fandom: ** Supernatural/SG-1  
**Title: ** The Fine Art of the PB&J (1/?)  
**Author: ** Maychorian  
**Characters: ** Jack O'Neill, Dean Winchester, John Winchester  
**Category: ** Crossover, Gen, Humor  
**Rating: ** K+/PG  
**Spoilers: ** Previous stories in 'verse  
**Summary: ** Dean was only trying to help, but Jack O'Neill has his own way of doing things. The way of the Peanut Butter Zen.  
**Word Count: **1687  
**Disclaimer: ** Pffft. Ownership is overrated, anyway. ::eats her sour grapes::  
**Author's Note:** Hmm, this crossover series is rather obsessed with food, isn't it? (For the curious, Jack's theories in this fic are, indeed, my own.) Part of the JACKNDEAN! 'Verse.

**The Fine Art of the PB&J**

"Hey, kid. Watcha doing?"

Dean looked up from his work, one hand flat on the kitchen counter, the other holding a knife, thick with peanut butter. He had to squint a little to make out Jack's face—the pre-dawn gray light spreading in the windows was not kind to his coffee-less brain. "Sandwiches," he said. "For trip. Peanut butter." Really, he was quite impressed with himself for managing that many syllables.

"What? Like that?" Jack's voice was utterly appalled. "No, no, you're going about it all the wrong way!"

"I am?" Dean peered blearily down at the slice of bread on the counter, mostly covered with a thick coat of delicious brown paste. It was no different than the first half of any of a thousand peanut butter sandwiches he had made over the years.

"Yes!" Jack came around the counter and shouldered Dean to the side, deftly catching the peanut butter knife before it fell. "Totally, totally wrong. These sandwiches are for lunch, right? You're trying to pack a basket for while we're out on the creek, fishing?"

"Um." Dean had to think about it. It was just instinct, knowing that they had to be on the road that day, dragging himself out of bed to go make sandwiches so that his family would have something to shut them up on the way to the next monster-demon-ghost gig, the next nowhere town. Peanut butter was great for that. Sometimes it even stuck Sammy's teeth together, if it was the really, really cheap stuff. Which it usually was. "Yes. Basket. Sandwiches."

Jack snorted a laugh, angled a smirk at him. "You're very eloquent this early in the morning."

Dean could not work out if that was an insult or not, so he just shrugged.

"But seriously. Just…no. These sandwiches will be sitting out for hours. They'll be all soggy. I refuse to eat soggy PB&J. Life is too short."

He scooped up the peanut-butter covered slice and folded it in half, then quarters, so it was just a giant wad of peanut butter and bread. Dean watched mutely, expecting him to chuck it in the trash, but instead Jack stuffed the entire ball into his mouth and chomped down, jaw moving in exaggerated chaws, like a baseball player with tobacco stuck in his lip, or a little kid with more bubblegum than sense. Dean could only stare. Maybe this entire thing was a dream?

Jack gulped it down after just ten seconds of chewing, though. "What? I wasn't going to let good peanut butter go to waste."

Dean closed his eyes and shook his head gently from side to side, feeling himself wake up just that little bit more. He needed all of his mental faculties to deal with Jack O'Neill. He spoke very slowly and very, very clearly. "Dude, why…. What was wrong with my sandwich?"

"I told you. Soggy. No good. Plus, you were using the wrong kind of peanut butter for the jam you got out."

Dean carefully picked up the jar of strawberry preserves and turned it over in his hands, looking for some clue, perhaps on the label, perhaps in the sticky scrim of coagulated fruit stuff around the rim. Nope, couldn't see anything. "I don't get it. What would you do different?"

Jack sighed the sigh of the very patient and compassionate teacher who had already gone over the whole two-plus-two thing a dozen times, but would kindly explain it once more. He took the jar from Dean's fingers and set it on the counter, then put warm, callused hands on his shoulders and steered him around to the other side of the peninsula. "Have a seat, kiddo. Let a professional show you how it's done."

Dean worked out that it was probably an insult, this time, and glared a little as he sat on the cushioned stool by the counter, propping his elbows on the cool stone surface. "Okay, fine. Explain it to me. What kind of peanut butter should you use with strawberry preserves?"

"Crunchy, of course," Jack said promptly, as if this was a fact of life that only the very small and dimwitted didn't already know. He flipped open the cupboard doors and pulled out a large jar of crunchy peanut butter, barely needing a glance to know exactly where it was, and thumped the solid plastic container on the counter beside the creamy Dean had already gotten out. "Preserves have big fat chunks of fruit in them. You need the chunks of peanut to balance it out. A good sandwich is a balanced sandwich."

"And a balanced sandwich is a good sandwich?" Dean asked sourly. He could see where this was going. Jack and his pseudo-philosophical bullshit, like the thing with fishing not being about catching fish.

"Not necessarily. But it certainly helps." Jack flashed a grin so wide and smugly satisfied, yet so full of genuine good cheer, that Dean couldn't help but forgive him for spouting idiocies at him at butt-early in the morning.

In an astonishingly short amount of time, Jack gathered and arranged a tidy row of jars and other ingredients in front of Dean's blinking eyes, standing at attention, a phalanx of tasty-looking soldiers ready to follow Major General O'Neill's commands. Crunchy and creamy, strawberry, apricot, and raspberry preserves, honey, marshmallow fluff, and some sort of dark brown stuff Dean had never seen before.

"What about grape jelly?" he asked. "Isn't grape jelly, like, the definitive peanut butter sandwich ingredient?"

Jack scoffed. "Jelly is for the weak. You need preserves. Something to sink your teeth into, y'know?"

"Okay. So preserves go with crunchy." Dean carefully poked one finger at the jar of apricot preserves, drawing back immediately at Jack's protective glare. "What about creamy? Do you leave poor creamy out in the cold? Poor neglected peanut butter." He scooped up the jar of creamy in both hands and cradled it gently in front of his face, inhaling the intoxicating scent of peanuts and oil through the saturated label.

Jack huffed an exasperated sigh, then plucked the jar from his fingers. "Of course I don't neglect the creamy. Creamy is awesome." He set it on the other side of the line, next to the honey and marshmallow fluff and the dark brown substance that hadn't been identified yet. "Creamy goes with these, of course. This stuff is usually a little sweet for me, though. Mostly I have the honey for Carter, and the marshmallow fluff is for Murray. Big guy loves his marshmallow fluff." He touched the dark brown jar, noticing Dean's intense, curious stare and finally deciding to pay attention to it. "And this is Daniel's fault, he of the freaky international tastes. Nutella."

"Nutella?" Dean rolled the strange word around on his tongue, oddly fascinated. "What's Nutella?"

Jack grinned and picked up the Nutella in one hand, resting the other on the lid as he leaned over the counter and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Nutella…is made of chocolate and hazelnuts." With a flourish, he twisted off the plastic lid and held the open jar to Dean's nose, letting him get a big, deep whiff of the most amazing thing he had ever smelled.

"Chocolate? Gimme that!" Dean was definitely more awake now, awake enough to beat Jack's damn-near Jedi reflexes as his hand darted forward and snagged the jar, then pulled it back to his chest so he could a run a finger around the edge of the opening. "Oh my God," he moaned. "It _is_ chocolate. Spreadable chocolate." He licked his finger, involuntarily closing his eyes.

"Yes. Spreadable chocolate. It goes with the creamy peanut butter." The jar disappeared from Dean's grip, now lax with ecstasy, and he opened his eyes to see Jack firmly screwing the lid back on, eyeing Dean with the same look a jealous father would give his daughter's prom date.

Dean was too blissed out to care. He felt a wide, sleepy grin spread across his face, and he blinked slowly up at his friend. "I can't believe that I never knew that existed until just now."

Jack scowled at him. "Kid, I swear that you just got high off a single lick of chocolate. It's a little creepy."

"I'm not creepy. I'm adorable."

"Yeah, whatever." Jack put the jar of Nutella back in the cupboard. Dean was sad to see it go.

He shook his head, pulling himself out of the chocolate-hazelnut haze by main force. "Okay, okay. So fruit preserves go with crunchy, and sweet liquidy stuff goes with creamy. But what does that have to do with keeping the sandwiches from getting soggy?"

"Nothing at all. All you gotta do is toast the bread." Jack pulled the toaster away from the wall and began slotting bread into it. "Just enough to dry it out a bit, mind you, not enough to brown or, God forbid, burn. There's also an art to the way you wrap the sandwiches, of course. I'll show you that in a bit."

Jack continued instructing Dean in the way of Peanut Butter Zen, and Dean pretended to be a diligent student, asking questions and helping out whenever Jack let him. By the time they finished, bright yellow sun was peeking over the lake outside, lemon sweet and sharp, and it was just about time to hit the road. Only then did it occur to Dean that something was missing from this little picture of domestic bliss.

"Hey, what's my dad up to? I haven't seen him since last night, and I know he didn't sleep in."

Jack glanced at the doorway to the living room. "He was doing something with some stuff. I dunno. Guess we should go check it out."

"Yeah, probably." Dean fought the sudden swell in his chest of…not panic, no, it wasn't panic, it wasn't fear, he wasn't thinking that his dad had just left and taken off without a word again. No way. He wouldn't do that.

Still, he found himself on his feet and walking briskly across the kitchen before he quite realized what he was doing.

"Dad? You there?"

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Rating changed for f- bombs.

X

"Dad?"

John Winchester was kneeling next to a coffee table, two large plastic boxes open in front of him, entirely engrossed in doing something with their contents. Dean stood still in the doorway, blinking and resolutely denying the fact that his heart was hammering, just a little bit. No, of course Dad hadn't left. He'd said he was going fishing, and he was.

"Hey, son." John looked up from his work, pausing to give Dean a smile, then bent back to the stuff in front of him. He seemed utterly content, and…was that humming?

"What're you doing?" Dean asked, slowly shuffling his way over to the table. He didn't want to intrude on what was evidently his dad's happy place, but this was just too friggin' weird. He circled around to stand at the man's side, and stared down at a bewildering array of shiny, colorful objects in a plethora of little slots and trays.

"Yeah, what are you doing?" Jack echoed suspiciously, suddenly appearing right next to them like the Air Force ninja he was. Dean startled a bit and tossed him a wild glance, then went back to staring down at John's handiwork. Jack gasped. "Hey, those are my tackle boxes!"

John looked up at this outraged exclamation, completely unperturbed. "Yeah, I know. They were a total mess. I just sorted everything out for you. Can hardly believe you let it get that bad, though."

"What? But…but those… You _organized_ my tackle boxes?" Jack was fairly sputtering, now, and looked ready to tear out his hair. He dropped into a crouch beside the table and reached over to grab the boxes and wrench them toward himself. "But…but they're mine! I had them exactly the way I wanted them! You never touch another man's tackle boxes!"

He gave John a deadly glare, all narrowed dark eyes and hard mouth. Dean took a step back.

"Well, 'the way you wanted them' was a complete jumble," John said calmly. "Very inefficient. I don't understand how you expected to find anything with no system like that."

"I like having no system!"

Dean felt a little breathless at the hypocrisy of this, coming from a man who had such an elaborate, complex, and detailed procedure for making peanut butter sandwiches, of all things. He was aware that discretion was the better part of valor in this situation, though, and held his silence.

Jack walked his fingers through the strange collection of rubber worms and plastic fish, all festooned with shiny little hooks. "I knew exactly where everything was! How'm supposed to find what I want now? My lures and spinners and jigs…" His tone was equal parts enraged and mournful, which just added up to a whole lot of whine. "I don't even understand what you did…."

The retired Major General suddenly went very, very silent, and very, very still. He held himself in eerie quiet for a long moment that seemed to stretch into forever. Dean realized that he was holding his breath and forced himself to exhale right before he started to get dizzy.

"Oh my God." Jack's voice was utterly emotionless, the calm in the center of the storm. Dean took another step back. "You _alphabetized_ my tackle boxes."

John shrugged, still smiling, loose and relaxed, still practically vibrating with pleasure. The fiddly little task had given him genuine happiness. "Took me a while, too, but definitely worth it."

Dean retreated to the kitchen and listened to the fury from a distance, like a storm beating at the windows, powerful but outside. This was one argument he was not going to try to referee.

X

They were going to drive him completely insane before the day was over, Dean was sure of it. Bonkers. Nutty. Bonzo. Three fries short of a Happy Meal. Stark raving mad.

After listening to the two OCD Old Men argue pointlessly for about fifteen minutes, Dean had admitted defeat and sallied forth from the kitchen, gesticulating and speaking loudly, the way you would wave your arms and make a lot of noise to scare a wild animal, make it think you were bigger than you were. "Come on, you guys! We're burning daylight! We should have left ten minutes ago! Does it really matter that much? Dad, you shouldn't have touched Jack's stuff. Jack, when the trip is over you can dump everything out and disarrange it to your heart's content. Okay? Is that okay? Can we go now?"

The two men had given him comically similar sheepish glances and agreed. Dean should have known then that something was going on. It wasn't like either man to give up so easily, but they had seemed to capitulate willingly. He should have known that that wasn't even close to the end of it.

The next argument was about whose truck they should take, but Jack won that one pretty easily, since he was the one who knew where they were going. Thankfully, they didn't fight about music, because "driver picks, shotgun shuts" still applied. Swing into town for coffee and donuts—no need to argue there because Jack got the big variety box—and then finally down to the creek for some quality fishing.

That was where it really started.

"Hey, kid, let me show you the perfect cast."

"Dude, that is so far away from the perfect cast, it isn't even in the same time zone. Watch this, Dean."

"Mine went farther."

"Distance is not the only measure of perfection. It's all about the accuracy, keeping your bait bobbing along near the surface. See what I mean, son?"

"When was the last time you went fishing, Winchester? You're so rusty, you're more rust than anything else."

"Just watch me, O'Neill. I ran a crick completely out of crawdads when I was eight, and I'll do the same today."

And it just went on and on and on. The only thing that kept Dean from being certain that Jack and John would end up murdering each other was the fact that they were wearing matching boonie hats, both stuck through with various fishing thing-a-ma-bobs, and he just couldn't take them seriously when they looked that ridiculous.

They kept track of how many casts it took each other to catch a fish, how many they caught, the size and variety. They competed on who could play a fish the longest, and who could reel one in the most quickly. They trash-talked in a hundred different ways both verbal and non, deliberately splashed water at each other, tried to beat each other at eating sandwiches when noon came around, and kept looking at Dean as if he was some sort of judge for their insane competition.

"When we're done, I'll show you the right way to gut 'em," John said to Dean, smiling proudly at his damp fish basket. He was currently ahead of Jack by one fish, though Jack insisted that his were bigger. And shinier.

"Dad, you showed me how to do that when I was nine, remember?" Dean said patiently. "Survival training? In case I had to live on what I caught someday? The same day you taught me how to make fishing line out of willow bark."

"Well, I bet he taught you all the wrong techniques," Jack said. "Just you wait—when the time comes, I'll show you the best way to use a knife. There's a whole finesse to it. You need a master to show you the way."

John glared at the other man for this, and Dean was a bit startled to realize that there was real venom in that look. Damn, these stubborn old bastards really did want to kill each other. Then his father's look went back to Dean, still hard, something in it that Dean didn't quite recognize.

He puzzled at it for a few moments, worrying at it like a fish hooked through one lip. Finally, realization hit, and Dean took a startled step backward, almost dropping his pole in the process. That look his father had laid on him… It was…it was proprietary. So were the ones Jack kept giving him, though his were more laced with humor, John's more deliberate and sustained. Both aimed at him, both equally guarded. Jealous.

"Oh my God!" Dean groaned, dropping his pole on purpose and digging his fingers into his hair, pressing his heels into his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at them. "You're _competing_ over me! As if I was a girl and you both wanted into my pants!"

He lifted his hands just enough to sneak a peak at the two older men, and sure enough, they were both staring at him, guilty, caught in the act. No shame on their faces, though. Just a touch of embarrassment, but neither made any attempt to deny the facts. It was completely and unavoidably true.

"Oh, fuck me. You are! You totally are! You know what, if I _was_ a girl and you were competing over me, this would be totally sexist. God, I don't even know what to call this!" He flailed, momentarily at a loss for words. "It's completely unnecessary! And stupid! And weird! And kind of gross, come to think of it."

Dean stopped to breathe, feeling nauseated. John and Jack looked at each other, sort of shrugging, then back at him, in mirroring poses, standing in the water with their stupid boonies and their stupid faces. Waiting for him to pick one, or something.

"God, you two. I don't even know how to deal with this. I like you both, okay? Fuck. This is just too weird. I'm going to go wait in the truck. You…do whatever you have to do. Beat each other to a pulp or fish the river out, whatever."

Dean paused at the picnic basket to scoop up a couple of leftover peanut butter sandwiches, because conflict always made him a little hungry, then stomped back toward the truck. The squelchy wet noises that his waders made at every step made the whole stomping thing a little ineffective, though. He took care not to look back.

Back at Jack's truck, he climbed in the back seat and flopped down, holding the sandwiches against his chest. Looked at them for a bit, so carefully wrapped in saran wrap and waxed paper, toasted whole wheat bread, dripping a little bit of crunchy peanut butter and thick strawberry preserves at the edges. ("A _man's_ PB&J," Jack had called it, inordinately proud.)

He thought about his dad, so carefully alphabetizing Jack's tackle boxes. Organizing things always made John sort of unreasonably happy, but he'd had no cause to do that. Except the fact that he was going fishing with his son and his son's new friend, and maybe he had wanted to take ownership for a little bit of that, put the John Winchester stamp on something. Prove that he wasn't just along for the ride.

Dean unwrapped the sandwich and took a big, hearty bite, chewing carefully, enjoying it. Something about it told him that Jack had made this sandwich just for him. He'd done a bunch of stuff for Dean over the past few days…cooked him waffles and steak and spaghetti, bandaged the cut on the back of his head, listened attentively to everything he had to say about things that shouldn't exist. Held him while he knelt on the cold ground in a dark cemetery, shaking and shivering.

So yeah, maybe Jack had the right to feel a little proprietary. He had taken Dean into his life, and Jack O'Neill did not do that lightly. He held onto his friends with all the fierceness of a lion with his pride. And John Winchester was exactly the same, though his pride had been given to him by the woman he loved above all the world, not chosen through years of strife. Dean guessed he should have expected something like this to happen.

It was still stupid, though.

The inside of the truck was warm but not stuffy, spring sun angling through the windows, and Dean was dozing, one arm wrapped over his chest, one shielding his face, when he heard the footsteps approaching. Heard Jack and his dad stacking stuff in the bed, talking quietly, just a few words here and there and only when necessary. Well, at least they hadn't killed each other. Yet.

The squeak of the front doors as the two men got into the cab, and Dean could feel eyes on him, but did not open his own. Fabric rustled as someone reached back to him, and he felt the large, rough hand on his arm, warm, pressing lightly for a moment, then drawing back. He couldn't tell if it was Jack's hand or John's.

And that was okay.

The drive back to Jack's cabin was long enough for the two men to start trading war stories. Vietnam, Iraq, the merits of various helicopters, methods of attack. Their voices were civil at first, then gradually more than that. Animated, speckled with small, genuine jokes, quiet laughter. Easy. Comfortable.

Dean drifted off for real when the wheels hit highway, and everything went smooth and deep and quiet. Half of a peanut butter sandwich rested on his chest, and he knew it wouldn't fall off. It was a well-balanced sandwich.

Practically a work of art.

(End)


End file.
